Oceanic Bridge RUMSON — Rehabilitation of the historic Oceanic Bridge will begin after Columbus Day and will close the bridge to all traffic for months, according to Bill Heine, director of public information for Monmouth County.
“It’s a long time coming,” said Todd Thompson, president of the Friends of the Oceanic Bridge Association (FOBA). “It got tangled up and should’ve happened probably four or five years ago. They wouldn’t have put a 3-ton limit on it if it wasn’t in bad shape.”
According to Heine, the bascule span, the part of the bridge that opens and closes, needs maintenance.
“Right now, we have to rehabilitate the main steel support and metal grid deck of the actual drawbridge,” Heine said last week.
On July 14 the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders awarded a $3.5 million contract to Iron Bridge Group Inc., of North Brunswick, to complete the rehabilitation work on the bridge. Heine said this should give the structure another 10 years of life.
“It’s going to inconvenience a lot of people,” said Thompson. “The bad news is, it’s going to be closed for nine months. The good news is it’s not going to be closed for 12 months. It has to be done.”
Thompson estimates that there are thousands of cars that use the bridge daily. In order to travel from Rumson to Middletown during construction, detours will take drivers to the Coopers Bridge in Red Bank or through Sea Bright to the Highlands Bridge.
The 70-year-old Oceanic Bridge faces a similar situation as the Highlands Bridge faced before its drawbridge structure was replaced with a modern, high-arc bridge.
While it undergoes rehabilitation to squeeze out another decade of life, county officials and Rumson residents will be meeting to discuss plans for a future and total bridge replacement, said Heine.
Thompson said that when the friends group started in 2005, they wanted a replacement similar to the drawbridge that already exists.
“That bridge has historic merit. It’s eligible for the historic registry, it’s the longest bridge in the county and it’s in between two historic districts.”
Heine said the county has been working for many years to get money in place for a shore-to-shore replacement, a project estimated to cost $100 million.
Though the county and residents support a low drawbridge replacement, the federal government distributes transportation funding and does not want to pay for the more expensive drawbridges, according to Heine.
“The benefit of the high-arc bridge is that you don’t have to pay anyone to be a bridge tender and there’s no moving parts to maintain,” he said.
But according to Thompson, residents appreciate the aesthetic value of the current span, which he said adds to local property values.
FOBA commissioned an economic impact study, which was submitted to the county on the Route 35 high-arc and the Route 71 drawbridge in Belmar, both of which span the Shark River.
Thompson said there was as much as a 23 percent decline in property values for properties with a view of the high bridge compared to those with a view of the low bridge.
“But it’s not a precise science,” he added. “That was what the figures showed for a certain timeframe and a certain area, and we felt it was relatively common.”
Heine said, “We [county] don’t want a high-level bridge. The residents don’t want a high-level bridge. We’re trying to convince the federal government to allow us to put a low-level bridge that essentially looks the same as the one they have there now.”
Thompson said there has been very strong public support for a low-bridge replacement for about five years now, including county freeholders and recreational commissioners.
“We just need to make sure people still feel that way.”
The first public hearing on the bridge project will take place at the Charles S. Callman Courtroom in Rumson Borough Hall on Monday, Sept. 19, at 7:30 p.m.
It will be hosted by the Monmouth County Division of Engineering in conjunction with the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority, New Jersey Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration in order to meet federal and state regulations, including the Section 106 consultation process, according to the county engineering website.